My Secret Addiction Ch. 08

"So, what's up?" I asked as I took another shot at a ball, scoring a side pocket.

"Thinking of getting another White Russian," she said and then downed the rest of her drink.

I bumped her shoulder with mine.

"What's with Deshawn? Did he do something?" I asked. "You know you can always talk to me."

She leaned against the pool table and sighed. Her gorgeous face distorted with an unfamiliar gloominess.

"It's not just Deshawn, it's men," she said and then looked over at me, her bottom lip trembling. "I'm never going to be happy, am I? I just want to be... I need more, and..." she looked away and rubbed at her eyes."I'm just an object to them. I don't know."

"Just sex?" I asked.

Her striking, hazel eyes pierced my own. "I mean... I love the sex, I really do, but it's just not enough anymore." Sarah looked away again gazing at nothing in particular. "Sometimes I wish I could just do everything differently, you know? I feel like I'm tainted. Used goods. No one would want to..." She trailed off and got quiet again.

I quickly pulled her into a tender hug.

"Don't say that about yourself. I think you're amazing, always have." I felt her arms wrap around my neck so I gently rubbed her back. "Why not just stop messing around with the meatheads? Wait for the right guy to come along. Someone who wants the same thing?"

She pulled back and cracked a smile, "And give up all that good dick? Yeah, not a chance mister."

"Come on, Sarah. Seriously. I think you'd make a wonderful wife..." I immediately felt embarrassed and went back to fiddling with my pool stick. Sarah blushed a little and looked down. "I mean... I think you're being too hard on yourself. Your other half is out there just waiting to be found. Stop wasting your time with the losers."

Sarah turned back towards the pool table but had a big smile on her face, the sadness at least temporarily melted away.

"My other half, huh? Where do I find one of those?" she laughed sarcastically.

"Probably not where you're getting your Jerome's and Deshawn's," I countered.

Sarah giggled and took a shot, but missed her mark. "So..." she sighed and then leaned on me. "We totally shared a snowball."

I felt my face flush with embarrassment again, I must have been beet red because she busted out laughing.

"Shhhh!!" I seethed and then started laughing with her. Sarah tickled my sides making me squeal like a girl. "You f-fucker!" I laughed as I held her arms away. At this point, random people were starting to look over at us so we calmed down.

"So how are things going with you and Leah?" she asked with a smirk.

Now it was my turn to be morose.

"Still haven't heard from her since last night," I grumbled, "sprung on me in a text that she's just going to spend the whole weekend with him."

"You're joke-ing!" Sarah gasped while looking at me side-eyed. I just stared at her, eventually producing a tight smile. "Wow..." She gasped with wide, surprised eyes. "Soooo, she's taking y'alls game that far, huh? Seem's kind of a bitchy thing to do but, I dunno. It makes sense for your game, right? Like... It makes it hot right? I mean... I'm sure it's hot for her, taking control like that, making you suffer a little bit."

I folded my arms and shook my head. "It's fucked up though, don't you think? Isn't it just taking things too far? I've actually been worried about her too... Does that make me a fool?"

Sarah stepped in front of me and smiled her sexy smile. "Awww, not at all. That's so sweet that you worry about her. I think that makes you a good husband! But don't you dare pretend like you don't like it. At least a little."

I looked away, but she turned my face back down to hers.

"Oh no you don't," she giggled, "it must be hard but I know that's not the only hard thing, am I right? Focus on that part!"

I stared down at her widening smile, her eyes fixated on mine. Her fingers were playing with the tip of her long blonde ponytail that was now draped over her shoulder. I knew that she knew. It really did turn me on, but I don't think she understood the gravity of it all. The bad hurt sometimes out scaled the good hurt. Or something like that, I barely understood it myself. How could I be mad?

"I can't..." I whispered.

"Hmm? You can't wha- " Her brows raised in surprise and as it suddenly dawned on her, "Oh my Gawd, you're wearing it aren't you?"

"Shhh!" I looked around and walked her over to the corner. I glanced back at the others. Xander and Anna were standing at the bar ordering another round.

"Hey," Sarah giggled, "No one is gonna know, calm down, silly. So how long have you had it on?"

I hesitated a long moment, fidgeting with my wedding ring.

"Ji— m!" Sarah whined, "Just tell me!"

"Couple weeks..." I rubbed my eyes, "one more to go."

Sarah's jaw hung open, "Holy. Shit. Woah!"

"Tell me about it." I could feel my penis straining at its prison walls as I spoke, "It's been hard but I just... I dunno... We wanted to explore it some more. So we— I did."

"Fuck that's so hot, Jim," Sarah pursed her lips," So like, Leah is fucking Kivon the whole time?"

"Yeah, I'm assuming it's Kivon anyway. Could be his friend. The thing is, she's leaving me out of everything for two weeks, can't even see her naked..." I leaned back against the wall. It was embarrassing but strangely felt cathartic to be able to just talk about this out loud with someone else, someone I trusted.

"That's pretty intense, Jim," Her lips were still parted in surprise. "That's like, part of it though, right? Seeing how much sexual suffering you can take until you break."

"A strange kind of masochism I guess," I sighed. I felt my cage squeezing me again. The thought of my wife's kiss also came with a breaking of my heart, but I longed for it, loved it, desired it.

She gently rubbed my forearm and smiled warmly."Like... You have to feel like you're losing what you truly never lost."

"But it's worse than that..."

"How so?" she asked.

"Well, it's like... I think a deep, dark part of me wants to lose her, to lose her to a black man..." I said while staring at her feet. "To lose her sexually to him..." My guts churned immediately after confessing such a bizarre thing out loud. For a brief moment, we both stood in silence while Sarah pondered what I had said. I noticed her face became flushed over time.

"Hmm," her lips pursed in thought, "so," her eyes studied me up and down, "you want her to be a black-owned slut... Like me?Is that it?"

"I..." I briefly felt dizzy and then the warm wetness of my caged penis leaking a spurt of precum."I think I do... Really badly... But, at the same time, I'm terrified it might ruin our marriage." What was truly worse? My secret addiction or my wife's new obsession?

"I can do my part to help push her along if you want, but I think she's well on her way," she whispered in my ear and then stood back. "But don't forget, Leah loves you, Jim." Sarah frowned, "she would never completely leave you, trust me, she would be crazy to. Look, I'm not a..." She lowered her voice to a whisper, "cuckold, "then continued, "but I get it. I think it's hot but I know your desires can be complicated and even contradictory. Just don't lose yourself in them, okay?"

"Sure... Yeah," I tried to smile.

"Like, I told you before, my friend had this kinda arrangement with her boyfriend," she bit her lip and looked around mischievously, "and it kinda like, made me fantasize about it!" She giggled, "I went on an internet search binge reading all about it after that. It's more common than you'd think."

We both went silent for a moment as a bar employee briskly walked past us and through a backroom door. Sarah started fidgeting with her ponytail again.

"If it ever gets too hard you know you can talk to me anytime about it, right?" she peered up at me shyly. "Just between you and me, I won't tell Leah."

"Thanks," I said, "It's just... It's embarrassing!" I shook my head and smiled. "I'm so fucked up, Sarah."

"We're both fucked up, so let's be fucked up together!" She said, her smile beaming.

Anna trotted up to us smiling.

"Hey, guys!" she called, "did you want some food? We're taking orders!"

We all scarfed down some pizza to absorb all the alcohol in our systems and then went our separate ways. Xander dropped Anna off at her place and then me back to my car. On the way home I couldn't stop thinking about me and Sarah's conversation, and how terrified I'd be for someone like Anna to ever hear a word of it.

As soon as I walked into my lonely, dark home I checked my phone. I had 1 unread text from Sarah.

Sweet dreams, cuckboy. Let me know how it goes!

I chuckled and shook my head as I headed towards the guest bathroom when a loud thump caught my attention. I peered behind me at the dark living room but didn't see anything. The only light was what came from the moon and street light outside. I shrugged and resumed my trek when two more muffled knocks froze me in my tracks.

I stood still and listened carefully. I could hear the crickets sing their little songs, a distant neighbor's car pulling into a driveway, and Mrs. Tully's wind chimes jingling lazily from a midnight wind.

Thunk!

Pop!

There it was again. I lowered my gaze from what seemed to be the source.

The basement.

That familiar yawning creak of the basement door opening made me cringe.

"Dammit," I cursed to myself that I forgot to grease the hinges again! The lights buzzed on, bathing the narrow stairwell into a sickly yellow light.

Thunk!

I crept down the narrow stairs, careful not to trip. I still felt slightly tipsy from drinking. What the hell could be making those weird noises I thought. I suddenly grew worried it might be rats again, or some other pest making a nuisance of itself.

Pop!

I found myself standing in the belly of the basement once more, surrounded by dusty old boxes filled with various old storage. I noticed the handle of my baseball bat sticking out the top of one of the boxes as if it were waiting for my hand, so I yanked it out and gripped it like a weapon. I crept around the stacked high boxes, peering at every nook and cranny, ready to smash whatever was making all the racket.

I scanned the last corner near the back of the concrete tomb of a basement, but there was nothing noteworthy to report. I wondered what my wife was up to while I was hunting imaginary ghosts in the dusty old basement.

Blop! Pluppt! Thunk!

I spin around to see the bulky old water heater, the rumbles and pops clearly emanating from the thing.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

How did I do this twice? I sighed and clonked the bat on the top of my head. I had been so out of my mind I let the stupid water heater spook me twice! I tapped it with the end of my bat, examining its dirty white surface, and all the pipes and gauges attached to it.

"Fuck you," I spat.

Those sounds were pretty loud, I made a mental note to call for maintenance on the thing. The last thing I needed was a water heater on the fritz.

I tossed the old wooden baseball bat on the couch and headed for the guest bathroom again. I decided I would just shower downstairs instead of the upstairs main bathroom because for some odd reason it made it feel less real that my wife was gone. I had a flashing memory of my wife locking me out of the bathroom so I couldn't see her naked body. I missed her kiss, her touch, and I missed seeing every perfect, sexy inch of her body.

After clearing my head in the hot, relaxing shower I dried myself off and tossed on the robe that was hanging there. I hunched over the sink and stared into the mirror. My hair was looking a little shaggy and unkempt, and I had dark circles under my tired eyes. I missed my wife, I wished with all my being she would come strolling through the front door right now.

It was just then that through the corner of my eye, I could see a tall, hazy silhouette of someone through the blurry see-through shower curtains.

It was just standing there in the shower!

I quickly turned to look, with my heart beating out of my chest, but nothing was there.

I regained my composure and slowly crept up to the shower curtain and swung it open in one forceful swing, only to reveal an empty bathtub.

As I turned to leave I heard the loud distinct sound of the shower curtains slipping across and hitting against the tiled wall, as though they had been quickly shut back. I could even feel the cool air hit me from the sudden movement of the curtains.

I yelped and spun around, my eyes wild and unfocused.

It was there; a dark, crooked figure standing in the bathtub. The blurry curtains obscured the details, but it appeared thin, with its head lolling against its chest to and fro. Its long, wet-looking hair constantly dripped something, while its body seemed to almost tremble.

I took a step back, trying not to make a sound, terrified I would alert it's attention. That's when that familiar stench entered my nostrils. It was that sweet perfume intermixed with rotten meat that quickly brought tears to my eyes and a bad taste in the back of my throat.

It was the longest moment of my life, I was frozen in mid-back-step as the thing trembled before me. That's when the lights began to flicker and I stumbled back in fright.

The thing jerked with an inhuman quickness during each moment of darkness, changing its position almost instantly. What must have been its head appeared high and pressed into the curtain material revealing a garish nightmare of a face, too distorted to be real. Its open mouth began making a gurgling sound, staining the curtain with a dark red just as the lights died for good.

"No! No!" I cried out as I stumbled and fell into the door battering my shoulder hard. A searing pain shattered through it, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I felt like I was underwater, fumbling for the doorknob in the darkness until my hand made purchase and I yanked myself free, and out of the dark bathroom of horrors. I landed hard onto the floor, gasping for air as if I were choking.

Cl-ikkk

Clakkk-k

Cl-ii-ckk-Cl-lakk

I could hear 'it' behind me, grinding its teeth with that hideous misshapen maw. I knew deep in my bones it was hungry for me, hungry for my very soul.

Split Splat

The sound of bare feet smacking across the tiled floor, leaving a wet mess in each step's wake. Its gait was staggered and uneven, but unrelenting. It was coming for me, it wanted me. I didn't know why, and I didn't even dare think of what it would do to me if it caught me. All I knew was that I had to get up, I had to get the fuck up!

My brain tucked my shoulder pain deep inside somewhere and I pushed myself onto my feet. I could just make out the edges of the thing moving inside the pitch-black bathroom, lit by ambient moonlight that wasn't obscured by my own shadow.

Cll-cllakk-clikkk

Claakk-k-k

I bum-rushed the bathroom door, grabbed hold of the doorknob, and slammed it closed with both my trembling hands. There was no way to lock it from the outside so I just stood there holding the door closed. I could feel my heartbeat drumming up through my skull as I stared at the white-painted door directly in front of my face. I couldn't help but think how little was separating that thing from me.

Other than my heartbeat, it was completely silent. The silence was almost deafening as my ears strained to hear anything, anything at all. I blinked and glanced around myself at the shadowy living room behind me.

What the hell was happening? Was this really happening? Was I in some ultra-realistic nightmare that refused to end? I must be seeing things, hearing things... I freed one hand to rub at my twitching eyes.

I took a few deep breaths trying to calm myself down. I thought about how when you see something wild or unexpected, it's easy to wonder if it ever really happened after the fact. It was less taxing on your mind and made you feel more at ease. But this felt real, looked real, even smelled real. It had to be my mind playing tricks, like a waking nightmare. Must be from being stressed, from just-

My thoughts were interrupted by the doorknob rattling and trying to turn on its own!

I quickly double gripped the knob and held it in place as hard as I could, straining my biceps to the limit. Whatever it was, it was strong. Very strong. Despite my best efforts, the damn thing was still turning slowly through my grip.

"F-fuck!" I seethed through gritted teeth.

The door flew open a few inches pulling me inward only for me to slam it shut again.

"Fucking-let go!" I screamed.

The door came ajar again and pulled inward into the unforgiving blackness only for me to outmuscle it and pull it closed again. I tried to put my entire weight into keeping the doorknob from turning but it was no use.

The door suddenly flew open even further this time and I caught a glimpse of an approximation of human features. A bloated searching white eyeball and a gasping outstretched mouth of horrors etched into my mind as the door came slamming shut again.

"N-no! F-Fuck you! Fucking leave me-me alone!"

I was so terrified my teeth were chattering on their own and my arms were shaking, palms sweaty. I could sense myself losing my grasp on the doorknob, and I was afraid I would absolutely lose it at any moment.

I raised my foot onto the wall next to the door frame and pushed while leaning back with my full body weight to hold the door closed. I strained and groaned like I was lifting the heaviest weights in the gym, pulling with all my might. I felt like I was going to pop a blood vessel but I didn't dare stop.

As what felt like an eternity passed, I could feel my muscles tiring and my limbs trembling with tiredness. I knew that I couldn't keep this up for much longer. I'd have to figure something out and quick. Come on, Jim, think! Think!

That's when I felt something tickling my toe. It was on the foot that was planted firmly on the floor. I glanced down trying to make out what it was in the dim light. Something long, something pale, something wiggling like a worm, no...

A tongue? It was a long, grayish wet... Tongue. It was pulsing and wiggling from under the door gap, gently licking my big toe and leaving a sticky smear behind. It quickly retracted back behind the door as if it knew I could see it.

"Hee hee hee ho ho ho heee..."

I could hear distorted, low-pitched laughter from behind the door that sent a deep, creeping fear up my spine. It was so unsettling it made me feel something beyond fear, but a pit of sick in my stomach. It was the kind of feeling you get when you know something horrible has happened and there's nothing you can do to escape it.

"Ho ho ho ho!"

"Haa haa haa haa!"

The wretched laughter seemed to echo all over the house, from every shadowy nook and cranny around me.

I arched my back and pulled the door as hard as I could while pushing my foot practically through the wall. I strained until I realized I was screaming in pain.

"Ho ho ho ho!"

It just kept laughing its ugly laugh. It wouldn't stop. I just needed it to stop, please stop, please! My fingers were slipping again, I could feel sweat dripping from my palms and onto my foot.

"Ripe... Ho ho ho! Can taste..."

I felt my palms slipping, my fingers sliding, my body falling, the room spinning, darkness overtaking...